


In Dreams

by ObserveroftheUniverse (observeroftheuniverse)



Category: The X-Files
Genre: Angst, Can be read as MSR but doesn't have to be, Cancer Arc, Cancer Arc (X-Files), Gen, Implied/Referenced Character Death, season 4
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-01
Updated: 2021-02-01
Packaged: 2021-03-12 02:41:23
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,117
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29128152
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/observeroftheuniverse/pseuds/ObserveroftheUniverse
Summary: The night of the first dream he wakes soaked to the skin with sweat, tears streaming down his face. He dreamed of Scully’s death...Originally written in June 2020, for the MSR Fanzine Volume 3.
Kudos: 13





	In Dreams

Anything placed by man can be removed by man.

Dana Scully’s cancer was placed by man.

Therefore, Dana Scully’s cancer could be removed by man.

With this simple proof Mulder is able to deny that his partner is terminally ill; to deny her mortality all together. At least, during his waking hours.

But in his dreams where no logic - earthly or extraterrestrial - holds meaning, he is vulnerable to his doubts.

The night of the first dream he wakes soaked to the skin with sweat, tears streaming down his face. He dreamed of Scully’s death, watched the light fade from her eyes like the last flickering ember of a fire. To watch was to wrap his heart with barbed wire, each beat a fresh wound. Yet he couldn’t look away - to do so would mean missing the last of her, and he could never do that. Looking also held him accountable. This is his fault. He deserves this pain; it is a penance.

Still half asleep, it takes him several terrifying moments to re-orient himself to reality; to realize it had been a dream. Scully isn’t dead. Not yet.

In the office the next morning his gaze lingers on where her clothes are starting to sag. Already there are empty spaces where she used to be.

She catches him staring and cocks her head to the side, inquiring. _What is it?_

He chokes down the lump in his throat, stakes his head, and forces a grin. _Nothing. Nothing at all._

* * *

A white oval sits in the center of Scully’s skull on the x-ray. He does not need to be told what it was; he already knows. It grows darker and darker as he stares until it is pitch black. Its ominous aura sets his heart cowering down to his stomach.

The oval shudders - awakening - and small tendrils of darkness unfurl from its center. Writhing, they spread across her bones. Like vines they crawl and grow, looping through her nasal cavity, climbing her forehead and curling around her head.

Intricate patterns spiral over ivory bone, twisting and overlapping until Scully is gone. Consumed by the insidious darkness growing within her.

* * *

Scully keeps him at arms’ length. Occasionally he is permitted to hand her a tissue when her life starts to drip from her nose, but she quickly runs off or shoos him away.

Each time her nose bleeds, his blood runs cold with fear. He aches to reach out and comfort her but fears it would be more for his own benefit than for hers. By taking away some of her pain, perhaps he could absolve himself of his own guilt.

Besides, he is the cause of her suffering. He has no right to make himself more a part of her pain than he is already. She made it clear she is not interested in his sympathy, nor does she want his shoulder for crying. He is already taking her life, the least he can do was let her have her privacy. If she would not give him her vulnerability, then he would not take it.

Once, just once, she had let him in: she hugged him. It was not until that moment that he realized how small she really was. Her presence had always been so large, her attitude making her seem unbreakable. But holding her thin frame against him, she struck him as suddenly so fragile. So slight he feared a strong gust of wind would be enough to carry her away. She would disintegrate until she was no more than ashes in the breeze - as intangible as his dreams.

* * *

He stands at a podium at the front of a crowded church. He knows - in the strange way one just knows things in dreams - that this is a funeral. Scully’s funeral.

The room is too bright. The edges of it smudge and flare in his periphery. The crowd’s vague faces are blurry - family and friends he has never met. As he scans the rows for someone familiar, the faces suddenly morph into theater masks. Each becomes an exaggerated, identical expression of first sorrow, then anger. They stare - hollow eyes boring into him - as they wait for him to begin his eulogy… or was it an apology?

He cannot recall what he is supposed to say. Glancing down at the podium, he searches for notes, but finds nothing more than a mess of eerie black spirals. Useless. He looks back up.

He opens his mouth but as he searches for words he sees her: Scully.

Translucent and thin, she is tucked into a pew at the very back of the too-large church. Her face does not shift like the others. Her features are haggard but hardened: Stone-set contempt.

His words never come.

* * *

No two dreams are identical. Sometimes they don’t even make sense. But their meaning is always the same: Scully dies. She dies, she dies, she dies she dies she dies she dies she dies. Each dream is a shard of jagged glass from a window into his future, gutting and carving him out from the inside until he is hollow. Until the day he wakes - having just seen the last of her life seep out of her like the drops of her blood he has watched seep into countless tissues - and his eyes are dry, his heartbeat slow and steady.

In the shower, he washes methodically and reflects on the dream. It was another snippet of the sorrow, pain, and guilt that has plagued him for months and yet… he feels nothing. The dreams no longer unsettle him, almost as though…

He realizes then that this is going to be his future: Scully will die, and he will feel nothing for the rest of his life. There is a crucial part of him that is going to be lost with her.

The fake smile he greets Scully with that morning comes naturally - an easy mask over his emptiness.

Maybe that crucial part has already died.

* * *

In the moments where he lays half-conscious, on the edge between reality and dream, there is hope that he will fully wake to remember that Scully is still alive. He has long stopped counting or noting the dreams; they are his new normal. But he has begun counting those moments, longing to stay in that space where she could still be alive.

He has never been able to save anyone. All his life, he has failed people until he has lost them. This time will be no different.

His desire to drag out those moments of half-consciousness is borne of that fear. And of the knowledge which he dreads the most:

One day when he wakes, she will still be dead.


End file.
